‘Breaking Bad’: ‘He thought of everything’

“Breaking Bad” is basically about the domino effect of one bad decision leading to another and another. Walt leaves a lucrative career for teaching, which leads to him having crappy health insurance, which leads him to decide to cook meth to support his family after he develops cancer, etc., etc., etc. Then we have Skyler: Skyler cooks the books for her boss, which leads to him being audited, which leads to him owing the IRS money he doesn’t have, which leads to her handing the money over to Ted to keep the feds from taking a close look at her own ill-gotten gains, which means that the White family doesn’t have the cash they need when they really, really, really need it.

So, let’s take a look at this week’s Bad Decision Cascade.

The action picked up where last week left off: In Mexico. A spotless makeshift clinic had been set up in a warehouse, where a team of medical professionals were waiting for Gus. Jesse sped up, blasting the horn; the team, bypassing the bleeding Mike in the front seat, yanked open the back door and pulled out Gus. They knew precisely what they were dealing with: A syringe filled with an antidote was immediately squirted down his throat, and they wheeled him inside….once again, leaving Mike holding his gut and bleeding all over the late Don Eladio’s purloined car.

Word of the massacre had, of course, gotten back to the United States. Hank, watching Gus’ compound with Walt, told him about it, and Walt tried to figure out, without seeming too inquisitive, whether Jesse had survived.

Hank also asked Walt about his injuries, offering to help him with whatever had led to them. Walt cut Hank off sharply: “I’m done explaining myself.”

Back in Mexico, the doctors had finally tended to Mike, though the bag restoring his blood was low. Jesse asked the doctor if Mike needed more; the doctor directed Jesse to change out the bag himself, and that’s when Jesse found a shelf filled with bags of blood bearing his name. The doctor rattled off Jesse’s health info — he knew everything about Jesse, info Gus had plainly provided in the fairly likely event that Jesse would need medical attention. “He thought of everything,” Jesse marvelled.

Then the man himself stepped into the room, ready to go. He decided to leave Mike to recover in Mexico — the doctor said he’d need about a week before he could travel — and he and Jesse walked outside. They would have to walk six miles to the Texas border, where someone would pick them up. Gus told Jesse that the take-away from their Mexico jaunt was this: Jesse is plainly capable of running the lab by himself. Jesse stopped walking, and they both adopted stand-off postures. Jesse asked Gus to let Walt go: “Please don’t kill him.” Gus refused to agree, and walked off; Jesse followed, at a distance.

Gus’ first stop in the United States was the nursing home where Hector lives, where he wanted to gloat a bit. He took tremendous pleasure in informing Hector that everyone at Don Eladio’s was dead, and that he had killed them. He also pointed out Jesse, and told him that Jesse had killed Joaquin, Hector’s last surviving relative, meaning that his family name dies with him. Hector struggled to keep his emotions in check, but he was clearly hugely upset.

Meanwhile, Skyler (who looked kinda cross-eyed in her close-ups — maybe that’s just how angry she is with this situation) went to see Ted, who had been leaving messages for her. He told her that he couldn’t take her money, that it wouldn’t be right. He also said, basically, that even if he paid off the IRS debt, his life is still ruined. She took this to be the opening line of a shakedown, though I honestly don’t think it was. (Anybody else have thoughts on that? Post ’em below.) Ted wrote her a check for $617,000 — which is less the amount she had given him, since he had leased that Mercedes. She ripped up the check, and asked him to write another, made out to the IRS. He refused. She left, and called Saul from the driveway.

Saul’s solution: He sent his “A-Team” — meaning the intimidating Huell and the Cut Rate Joel McHale (whose name I didn’t catch) — to force Ted into writing a check to the IRS. The “A-Team” would then Fex-Ex the check to the authorities, and camp out at Chez Ted ’til the check cleared. Ted made a run for it, slipping on a lose rug and taking a header into a wall; he was twitching, but I think Saul’s guys believe he’s dead…which is one way of solving that particular problem.

Walt and Hank went off another “Hardy Boys” venture, as Marie calls their jaunts, but this time, Hank directed Walt to drive to a different enterprise he wanted to check out — an industrial laundry owned by the same German conglomerate that owns Dos Hermanos. Dun-dun-DUN! Walt tried to talk Hank out of going there, pretending to worry that they’d miss something at the other place; Hank insisted, and, in the end, the only thing Walt could think to do was steer into another car, causing an accident that would put Hank off the case for a bit. Though not for as long as Walt would like: Hank decided that he needed his own wheels, and ordered a “gimp mobile” of his own so that he could drive himself to his stakeouts instead of imposing on other people.

Because of that, Walt had to be smuggled into the laundry, lest he risk being spotted by Hank. When he got to the lab, it was obvious to him that someone had been cooking there, which told him that Jesse was back. Walt went to see Jesse, who was less than thrilled to see him. Jesse refused to listen to Walt, who pleaded with him, pointing out that Gus will kill Walt if Jesse can run the lab alone. (Jesse also, of course, didn’t tell Walt that he was actually doing what he could to keep Walt alive.) Jesse went inside, and Mike’s guys appeared, zapping Walt with some sort of cattle prod or Tazer.

Walt woke up in the desert, on his knees, with a black bag over his head. Gus arrived, yanked the bag off, and fired Hank. He told him to stay away from the laundry, and from Jesse. Walt — eternally defiant — responded, “Or what?” Then he pointed out that, if Gus could kill Walt, Walt would be dead. He knows, he said, that Jesse had refused to cook for him if he killed Walt. It was a dangerous gambit, considering all that Walt has to lose and just how dangerous Gus is. Gus brought up Hank, a problem that Walt was supposed to solve, but, he said, since Walt hadn’t done it, Gus would have to take care of it. Then he said that, if Walt goes near Jesse, Gus will kill Skyler, Walter Junior and “your infant daughter.” That appears to be one very large loophole in the arrangement he has with Jesse.

Walt made his way into town, going directly to Saul’s office. He chased out the A-Team, and then demanded the contact info for the guy who “disappears” people. It’s a pricey endeavor — half a million dollars, Saul said, to disappear Walt and his family. Walt, in an uncharacteristic moment of thinking a few steps ahead, asked Saul to wait and hour then call the DEA and tell them that someone had put out a hit on Hank. Then Walt fled, dashing to Skyler’s to retrieve the cash from the crawl space under the laundry room. He immediately realized that a lot of money was missing; Skyler, freaked out, appeared in the laundry room, and ‘fessed up to giving the money to Ted. And that’s when Walt got really, really scary: crying, then laughing hysterically, then just lying there, breathing heavily. While all that was happening, the phone rang; it was a frightened Marie, telling Skyler that the DEA had let them know about the hit (did Saul call early, or did it take Hank an hour to get home?).

All of this seems like a pretty great season-ending cliffhanger. BUT we have two more episodes! What on earth is going to happen next? Will Jesse, in fact, be able to run the lab on his own? He can cook, but could he deal with any problems that arose? What is Walt going to do? Will he attempt a do-it-yourself disappearance? Post your theories and thoughts below, and let’s have a conversation.